Smooth and silent operation with secondary air suspension and resilient wheels.

Secondary air suspension is not new on trains, as it certainly featured on British Rail Mark 3 coaches from the 1970s, which have a legendary smooth ride. It can still be seen between the bogie and the coach on many Bombardier trains, which trace their ancestry to British Rail designs.

The picture shows the bogie on a Class 378 train.

Note the air-suspension above the frame of the bogie.

Some cars use secondary air suspension with computers to control the amount of air in each rubber bag to improve the ride and road-holding.

“On the South Wales Metro, variants of Class 399 tram/trains and Class 755 trains will share platforms.”
Stadler’s Tango concept has low and High floor variants.

“Could the same tram-trains be adjusted so that they fit the Manchester Metrolink platforms, which are higher?
If they can, then Manchester has got a source of off-the-shelf tram-trains.”
This has always been an option as many of the German Stadtbah systems have high floor LRV’s.

I’ve also put a piece in about power/weight ratio. The 399s have a lower ratio, but fifty percent more driven axles. This must give them their sparkling performance.

I don’t know the answer to this but would twelve eight-stone people be able to pull a gun carriage better than eight twelve stone people, as they have more legs to apply distributed power. Bombardier in the Aventra have gone for the full monty, with lots of powered-axles.

About This Blog

What this blog will eventually be about I do not know.

But it will be about how I’m coping with the loss of my wife and son to cancer in recent years and how I manage with being a coeliac and recovering from a stroke. It will be about travel, sport, engineering, food, art, computers, large projects and London, that are some of the passions that fill my life.

And hopefully, it will get rid of the lonely times, from which I still suffer.